Surveying and Modeling Trucking Industry Perceptions, Preferences and Behavior

Methods developed to study passenger travel behaviour can be usefully applied in studying perceptions, preferences, and behaviour of important actors in freight transportation. Transportation planners throughout the world can benefit by gaining improved understanding of how trucking companies are coping with changes in transportation system levels of service and how companies are likely to react to opportunities presented by information technologies and intelligent transportation systems. In this paper we present five different structural equations models (SEM) that have been estimated using large-scale survey data from the trucking industry. These models are used to examine carrier perceptions related to problems accounting for operational inefficiencies, impacts of traffic congestion on roads and at terminal facilities, transportation policy priorities, and uses of and opportunities for implementing computer and information technologies.